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Racing's secret seven: Movers and shakers who help drive the sport

August 28, 2012

Monisha Kaltenborn is not only the CEO of the Sauber Formula One race team, but she is also a one-third shareholder in the company.

Monisha Kaltenborn

Allmendinger, Alonso, Force, Johnson, Earnhardt—any racing fan or even most casual observers are familiar with those names and others that dominate headlines. But as in all major-league sports, people who you have likely never heard of are the behind-the-scenes influencers, affecting myriad facets of the on-track product that draws millions of eyeballs each week throughout the season. Meet some of the motorsports world's often overlooked yet big-time players.

Cary Agajanian

Very few women have held management roles in Formula One, but Monisha Kaltenborn has gone one better than that. Not only is she CEO of the Sauber team, but in May, team owner Peter Sauber gifted her a one-third shareholding in his company, in recognition of her good work.

Born Monisha Narang in India in 1971, Kaltenborn is an Austrian citizen, her family having moved to Vienna when she was a child. She was educated as a lawyer, and that proved to be her route into Sauber via a job with the Fritz Kaiser Group, which was a shareholder of the team in the late 1990s.

When FKG parted company with the team, Sauber invited her to stay on as its legal head, becoming a member of the management team in 2001. She played a key role in the team's sale to BMW in 2005—and even more so in the complex untangling of the arrangement when BMW quit F1 four years later. Only as CEO in the post-BMW era has Kaltenborn become one of the team's public figureheads, and the FIA recognized her influence by appointing her as an ambassador to the Women in Motorsport Commission alongside past and present female drivers.

—Adam Cooper

Cary Agajanian has promoted races, promoted tracks, worked the pits, owned cars and served as legal counsel and rules committee member for scores of sanctioning bodies.

Jost Capito

Cary Agajanian, 70, has never been a professional race-car driver, but he has served in various roles within motorsports. Ubiquitous to industry insiders but easily lost in a crowd at virtually any track in any series, the son of promoter/car owner legend J.C. Agajanian built one of the most influential sports agencies in racing, Motorsports Management International LLC. The company has boasted the likes of, among others, NASCAR stars Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch as clients. Meanwhile, he is a partner in the law firm of Agajanian, McFall, Weiss, Tetreault & Crisp, which provides liability-defense services to the medical and sports and leisure fields.

Agajanian has promoted races, promoted tracks, worked the pits, owned cars—including a stake in Dan Wheldon's 2011 Indianapolis 500-winner—and served as legal counsel and rules committee member for scores of sanctioning bodies. Assisting an aspiring young driver named Jeff Gordon to negotiate his first NASCAR contract helped launch the idea of a full-service representation, accounting and management firm for drivers, which eventually evolved into Motorsports Management International, a major player in driver services. When Stewart, then the first USAC triple-crown winner, needed advice for his next career move, he called Agajanian because of the family's 60 years of work in motorsports and the insight he could provide as a lawyer. Stewart joined the Indy Racing League, where he became a two-time champion and eventually transitioned to an even bigger opportunity in NASCAR. Agajanian's impact on the business of racing and the paths of its stars is significant.

—Brant James

Jost Capito, who has worked for Ford, BMW, Porsche and was a CEO of the Sauber Formula One team, heads Volkswagen Motorsport.

Walt Czarnecki

The people at Ford's SVT division loved having Jost Capito around, but for a guy working largely in Detroit, largely on very American vehicles such as the Shelby GT500 Mustang and the

SVT F-150 Raptor pickup, Capito seemed so, well, European. Thus, it was only a mild surprise when Capito, 53, announced in March that as of May 1, he would be back in Germany to take over Volkswagen Motorsport. He replaced Kris Nissen, who led VW to wins on the Dakar Rally the past three seasons, a race that, incidentally, Capito himself ran and won in the truck category.

Capito went to work for BMW in 1984 as a development engineer, then moved to Porsche in 1989, eventually overseeing all of the marque's racing programs. He worked at Sauber Petronas Engineering from 1996 to 2001, including serving as CEO of the Sauber Formula One team. Capito moved to Ford in 2001, where, upon his departure, he was responsible for Ford's global performance vehicle initiatives and for motorsports strategy.

At Volkswagen, Capito's most pressing directive will be to get the company's World Rally Championship program, with the Polo R WRC, up and running for 2013. Much of the work had already been done before his arrival, but even though WRC is barely a blip on the U.S. motorsports radar screen, this is a very high-profile launch for the rest of the world. “Big and interesting tasks are awaiting all of us,” Capito said. Those include the natural-gas-powered Scirocco R-Cup program and as an engine manufacturer in Formula Three. Don't be surprised if VW's motorsports program doesn't grow significantly, given his experience in the United States—ongoing rumors say the company has its eye on a NASCAR entry.

—Steven Cole Smith

Walt Czarnecki is the executive vice president of Penske Corp., vice chairman of Penske Racing and has served as the vice chairman and president of Penske Motorsports.

Don Hawk

One might call Walt Czarnecki Roger Penske's “suit in the pits” or “board member in Nomex.” He's comfortable in both.

Autoweek's late publisher emeritus, Leon Mandel, once called Czarnecki Penske's “éminence grise.” No one else in Penske's Corp.'s global enterprises has the Captain's ear like he does.

Czarnecki, 68, is just as at home talking race strategy with Sprint Cup star Brad Keselowski or any other Penske team member as he is helping run the business. His 40-year-plus tenure with Penske is testament to a two-way trust. Czarnecki came to Penske from the short-lived AMC racing project in the Trans-Am Series.

His titles are some of the loftiest in business and sports, i.e. executive vice president of Penske Corp. Czarnecki is also the vice chairman of Penske Racing and has served as the vice chairman and president of Penske Motorsports. Among some of the nonracing businesses that Czarnecki helps oversee are 150 U.S. car dealerships, plus more than 100 internationally, and a truck-leasing corporation.

The soft-spoken Czarnecki carries much weight without calling attention to himself. He doesn't shun publicity, but he does not seek it either, and it's likely you'll find him doing anything needed for the Penske teams' success. “All I want to do is contribute,” he said. —Lewis Franck

Don Hawk, 56, is vice president of business affairs for Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc. He is also a former agent who helped negotiate deals for Dale Earnhardt and helped put the late seven-time Cup champion on Forbes' list of the world's top-five highest-earning athletes.

Bernie Marcus

Don Hawk, 56, is listed officially as the vice president of business affairs for Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc., but “consigliere” is a better term. He was one of the first impeccably dressed executives to be seen at NASCAR racetracks, yet he has worked on the research and development of car bodies, too. When traveling to Speedway Motorsports' various tracks, Hawk is usually by Smith's side, should the entrepreneur need some advice.

Hawk comes from a long history as a business mentor to late Sprint Cup Champion Alan Kulwicki. Later he became Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s “Jerry Maguire,” in Hawk's own words. He helped negotiate deals for Earnhardt, putting the late seven-time Cup champion on Forbes' list of the world's top-five highest-earning athletes. As Smith told Autoweek, “Hawk did everything but drive Earnhardt's car.”

Before joining SMI, Hawk served a stint running NASCAR's Touring Car series. Today, his duties with SMI include reporting to Bruton and Marcus Smith, “doing everything from negotiating property and track sanctions and rights to making T-shirts to our subsidiaries."

—Lewis Franck

Jim Voyles

The German-born aeronautical engineer has worked in Formula One with teams such as ATS, March Leyton House and Onyx; he later joined Galles Racing in the now-defunct CART series. Proving that he was no ivory tower guy, in 1990 he helped save driver Al Unser Jr. from incurring more serious injuries in a pit fire in Cleveland with his quick-thinking action to shut off the fuel valve. In 1992, he was the race engineer for Bobby Rahal's championship season in that series.

Today, Marcus is Ford's aerodynamicist for all of the company's North American racing programs: NASCAR (Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Trucks), NHRA, Grand-Am (Daytona Prototype) and USAC. He was also instrumental in the creation of the Fusion that Ford in 2006 debuted in Cup and Nationwide, as well as today's Nationwide Mustang race car. More recently, Ford revealed his baby, the 2013 Fusion, during NASCAR's preseason media tour in January. Being part of the Ford group present at the reveal was a rare appearance of that kind for Marcus, who spends about 70 percent of his time in the wind tunnel and the rest at racetracks.

—Lewis Franck

Jim Voyles, an Indianapolis criminal-trial lawyer, is tied to cars and racing by birth, marriage, vocation and vacation. His uncle, former Speedway, Ind., judge George Ober, helped form the United States Auto Club in the 1950s. Voyles is married to Joan Parsons, the daughter of 1950 Indianapolis 500 winner Johnnie Parsons.

Voyles' law practice has represented several of racing's prominent names, the biggest of whom was safety-equipment pioneer Bill Simpson in a defamation of character case against NASCAR in the wake of Dale Earnhardt's 2001 death at Daytona International Speedway. He also represented Mike Tyson in the boxer's infamous 1992 rape case.

Voyles once co-owned the now-defunct 16th Street Speedway dirt oval with Tony George and David Cassidy, the latter the longtime aide to late Indianapolis Motor Speedway boss Tony Hulman. But what Voyles, 69, enjoys most is being a race fan, and he does that quite well.

Since being introduced to the sport at Springfield (Ill.) Speedway, which people called “Little Springfield,” he has attended Indy since 1953. He travels to several IndyCar races a year, in addition to being a regular at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.